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Creating Your Own Pseudoscience

part two

5 June 2010.
In part one, I described an
exercise from my critical thinking text in which I ask the
student to create his or her own
pseudoscience.
Part one describes some of the commonly found characteristics of
a pseudoscience, and provides some examples of real and invented
pseudosciences. The purpose of the exercise is to get students
to approach pseudoscience from the inside out, rather than just
lecturing them on the various weird ideas people have come up
with and defended in bizarre and Byzantine ways. Here I wish to
provide some guidelines for creating your own pseudoscience.

1. Appeal to
something that most people fear or desire, things like suffering
and death, or sex and longevity.

2. Make big promises
about having scientific proof that you can relieve any physical
illness or emotional pain, or that you can deliver "fantastic"
sex or "help" people live for hundreds of years.

3. Use a lot of
jargon and weasel words. Throw
in words like "quantum" and "energy field" frequently. Make your
product sound enormously complex, but couch all your promises
with vague expressions like "may help."

4. To ward off
critics who might actually know something about science, lace
your promotions with references to government and business
conspiracies that are keeping the truth from the general public.
Make sure you remind everybody that "science doesn't know
everything" and "science has been wrong before."

5. Don't be afraid to
make stuff up and lie like a government leader. Even if you are
prosecuted for fraud, you'll just get a lot of valuable
publicity for free. The odds of you being made to suffer by a
big fine or jail term are near zero. If you do have to pay a
fine, change the name of your product and start over again with
a few tweaks here and there in your language. You can keep doing
this forever, given the kinds of things our law enforcement
agencies focus on. And don't worry about the media investigating
you and exposing you for a fraud. They won't bother you until
you've been arrested. Even then, they'll just report that you've
been charged with an "alleged" crime, which you will deny and
turn in your favor by playing the persecution card.

6. Don't be cheap.
Charge an exorbitant amount of money for your product. The more
you charge, the more likely people, especially government
procurement officers, are going to think that your product is
genuine.

7. The ideal
pseudoscientific product should be a hand-held device that
promises eternal life, perfect health (it should detect and cure
all diseases), astounding sex (by enhancing your immune system
and your personal energy flow), and can also detect bombs or
golf balls with the flip of a switch.

8. Make sure you
claim that you have discovered a "secret" that every other
scientist in the history of the world has missed. If you're
feeling especially daring, claim to have discovered a new law of
nature that has scared the scientific community into trying to
silence you.

9. Lace your
commercials with testimonials from athletes, washed-up
celebrities, and psychics. If you can get
Sylvia
Browne on board, do so. She has written over twenty books
that have made it to TheNew York Times bestseller
list. She'll be expensive, though, so if you can find someone
who looks and sounds like her and will work for scale, do it.

10. Never forget that
most people trust celebrities more than they trust scientists,
physicians, or government agencies. Use this knowledge to your
advantage.

11. Claim that the
reason your work has not been published in peer-reviewed
journals is because of a conspiracy to keep you silent or that
the development of your product has taken all your time and
money, so you haven't had the time or been able to get the
funding (because of the conspiracy) to do the studies.

12. Don't worry about
contradicting yourself. Few potential customers will notice and
those who do won't care. When scientists refute you, make up
ad hoc hypotheses
to explain away their concerns. Don't be shy about
special pleading for your product since, after all, you are
a great benefactor of mankind offering them a truly unique gift.
One really great device is to claim that
randomized double-blind control
studies don't work for your special field; that's why you
don't use them.

13. Claim that some
ancient civilization that can't be traced by real historians
developed the technology that you re-discovered. Or claim that
there are pockets of people living in hidden villages in India
or China that still use this technology and that they live for
hundreds of years without the need for scientific medicine. You
might even throw in the claim that skilled users of your product
will be able to do some magical things like fly or at least
levitate.

14. Don't be afraid
to use magic tricks to deceive people, but these are rarely
necessary since most people like to be deceived and won't know
that you are playing on their ignorance of the
placebo effect or the
ideomotor effect, or how to do a
properly controlled test of causality.

15. Don't worry about
the lack of scientific evidence for your product. People are
more interested in and persuaded by
testimonials
than they are by scientific studies. One good story on Oprah
trumps a thousand exquisitely designed scientific studies. You
might be able to get on Oprah by connecting your product to
"spirituality." You don't have to worry about defining the term,
since people will make it mean whatever they want it to mean.
Remember: most people love and trust stories more than they do
scientific evidence. You might even enhance your own story by
claiming that other scientists don't have the ability to see
what you see, that the data is obscure and requires special
training (that only you have) to detect what you claim to
detect.

16. Align yourself
with the great scientists of the past who were persecuted.
Galileo is a favorite here. On the other hand, you might try to
distinguish yourself by taking a different route. Forget the
great scientist and try to find another equally irrelevant
reference, say to Andrew Wakefield, Kevin Trudeau,
or Deepak Chopra.

17. If you're too
lazy to create your pseudoscience
from scratch, find a model to copy. For example, nobody ever
went broke selling vitamin and mineral supplements. Of course
you'll claim that your brand prevents cancer by stimulating the
immune system and increases IQ by increasing blood flow to the
brain. But don't forget to mention that your product is
organic and
natural, safe
for children (even if it isn't), and has been shown to improve
scholastic performance by up to 80%. You might even claim that
your product helps balance chi and
uncoil the kundalini.

If you're really
lazy, but have "charisma," you might try
faith healing.
You don't have to build an audience. The hopeful are waiting for
you to arrive. All you have to do is show up, talk with
confidence about your powers, and do a few stunts, like
Anatoly Kashpirovsky or
Peter
Popoff.

18. It's best to make
claims that can't be disproved, but if you do make claims that
can be falsified, be sure to follow the advice in point no.12.
People have many needs, but for most people the need for truth
isn't one of them. Give them something to believe in.
Promise them things like salvation or equally
swell-sounding but empty prizes.

19. Most people are
impressed by titles and uniforms, so buy a doctoral degree from
a diploma mill
and a lab coat. There are hundreds of diploma mills and some of
them offer impressive sounding letters to place after your name
for a reasonable price. You can steal a lab coat from your local
hospital.

20. When proven wrong
in a public demonstration of your claims, never admit defeat.
Claim the study was biased, done by biased people with an
agenda, or that there was one minor problem that you are going
to fix as soon as more investors pour money into your pocket.

When you make your
millions and become famous, don't forget those who helped you
achieve your true potential and maximize your hidden talents. If
we're not rewarded for our efforts, we may have to put a
horrible curse on you: eternal life in heaven with people like
yourself.

In the
February 2010 issue of Skeptic magazine (volume 15 number
3) an article by Ryan A. Shaffer reviews several books by
self-described psychics in which they reveal how they use cold
reading to dupe clients. If some sort of psychic pseudoscience
is your shtick, then you might find one of these useful: How to Get rich in Your Own Psychic
Business by Herb Dewey and Mark Sky; Red Hot Cold
Readings: The Professional Pseudo-Psychic by Herb Dewey;
King of the Cold Readers by Herb Dewey and Thomas K.
Seville; and Mind-Blowing Psychic Readings: Complete Scripts
for Specific and Generic edited by Dewey and Sky.